Categories
Technology

Survival guide to LAMP: Basic ingredients

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’ve heard from several people interested in moving to an open source weblogging tool like WordPress or Textpattern, but they’re concerned about having to manipulate PHP code in order to modify the templates or make the changes to the tool to incorporate modifications some of us have created.

What happens, then, is these folks stay with a hosted and/or proprietary tool, even if they aren’t happy with it, and this bothers me. I’m cool with folks remaining with other tools because they’re not interested in tweaking an open source product, or because they like the tools; but I think those of us who support the open source effort have an obligation to make the products of open source obtainable to everyone interested, tech or not. I have never felt that there should be a division between the techies and the non-techies when it comes to our physical environments. A better divider, to me, is interest: there are those who are interested in using open source products, or tweaking the product to fit their needs; and those who just want to use a weblogging tool, as is, no mods. Packaged product, end of story. Regardless of technical skill.

I’ll get into this further, but first a little digression:

Today’s Web environments are different from the environments we endured back in the Web stone age. Years ago I remember that the only thing you could depend on within a web environment was that a web server was installed. There might, just might, be other software installed that you could use–usually Perl for CGI applications. If you hosted with a Windows ISP, you also had access to ASP, and sometimes even SQL Server. If you were hosted on Unix, you had Perl and some limited ability to install a rather intimidating array of programs that usually caused havoc with your system at one time or another.

If you had your own server–and this wasn’t that common long ago–you had to maintain everything yourself, and you had to know what you were doing. Even today, with the increased sophistications of hosting options and environments, an independent environment does require a great deal of expertise with Internet and usually Linux facilities. Still, long ago, this was the only option for people who wanted to run a database, applications, and various languages.

Today the web hosting environments are different. First the reduced costs for co-location or virtual servers has increased the number of people running independent servers. However, most of us have a hosted site on an ISP, like my own on Hosting Matters, where the cost is less and, more importantly, much of the server administration is handled by the ISP. Considering the number of security releases for even a reliable product such as Red Hat Linux, having that aspect of administration handled by the ISP is worth the loss of some independence.

However, just because we don’t have total server independence doesn’t mean we don’t have access to a great deal of software. Most of us are served through the Apache web sever, with several modules compiled in increasing our ability to customize our own environment. In addition, most ISPs now offer database access, usually MySQL but other databases are supported. As for code — I don’t know of any ISP that doesn’t have PHP and Python installed in addition to Perl, and with today’s beta release of Mono for Linux, we should soon see support for C#, too. Personally, I’m looking forwared to this one–I’ve always liked C#.

We also have access to applications that help us manage our environment. My own ISP provides cPanel, a very sophisticated interface that allows us to easily add and remove users, databases, files, security, and even applications. Integrated with this control panel is a host of other tools such as PHPMyAdmin, which greatly increases the simplicity of working with the MySQL database.

There are some limitations, of course. For instance, if you want to run a beta release of a product, you might have to negotiate with the ISP to have it installed, and if it proves a problem, they’ll yank it. And forget asking to install an EJB (Enterprise Java Bean) framework on most systems. Frameworks tend to be notorious CPU hogs, not to mention tempermental and easily crashed.

However, for the most part, this shared hosting environment, with the administrative tasks handled by the ISP but with access to a plethora of tools for us to do dama.., urh, interesting stuff is an optimum solution for most of us, and is how many of us are currently hosted. At a minimum, these hosts provide what most of us ask for, which is LAMP.

O’Reilly long ago coined the term LAMP to encapsulate the web environments used, incidentally, for most weblogging tools, and hosted by most ISPs. LAMP stands for a set of open source product encompassing Linux (or one of the BSD Unix variants) as operating system; Apache as web server; MySQL as database; and one or more of PHP/Perl/Python as scripting language.

I am inordinately fond of LAMP, though most of my development expertise in the past has been non-LAMP. For instance, I’ve developed with Visual Basic/C++, within ASP and not; I’ve also worked with Delphi and Powerbuilder, in addition to spending a number of years working with C, C++, and Java on Unix boxes. There was some Perl here and there, but for the most part, much of my experience has been Windows development or Java and the aforementioned EJBs.

However, over time I’ve come to appreciate the cleanliness of LAMP–the simplicity of the development process; how lightweight and accessible it is. There is no initial investment of thousands to install the infrastructure, as is necessary (usually) with EJBs; there isn’t even a significant learning burden put on the developer to obtain expertise in LAMP. After all, anyone can install Linux on their PCs, and once that’s installed, download and install Apache, MySQL, and PHP–for free.

Okay, okay–free as in beer.

Bluntly, aside from my interest in Mono, I have no interest in returning to work with Java or huge infrastructure environments. Give me simple. Give me clean. Give me open source, and make it free.

What does this mean to you, the innocent weblog writer? Well, nothing much if you’re using a tool such as Blogger that manages your weblog for you. However, if you have to install your weblogging tool, you and your environment are going to, at some point, have to meet and greet. I know enough about weblogging tools to know that most are LAMP-based (okay, okay, .NET folks, don’t crawl all over my case with this one–I know you’re out there, in numbers to big to ignore).

How far you take the greeting, though, is up to you. That’s where we go back to webloggers who are interested in open source and tweaking, as compared to webloggers who just want to push a button and have a weblog instantly created. For most folks, LAMP exists but they don’t have the training to take advantage of it. This, then, makes installing something like WordPress, with its PHP exposure, intimidating. But there’s nothing about these tools that require a person have a technical background in order to be comfortable with installing products like WordPress or Textpattern, running updates on MySQL, or modifying an .htaccess file in order to redirect web pages.

I haven’t done a tech series for a long time, and I think I’m overdue. So, for the next few weeks, I’m going to write a number of tutorials about LAMP, targeted for the non-tech, to see if I can’t increase the comfort level with those of you using Linux, or Apache, or PHP, or MySQL. I will be focusing on PHP, of the three P’s: PHP, Perl, and Python. Personal preference you might say.

During these, I’ll install and configure WordPress 1.2 beta for one of my web sites, and then walk through modifications I’ll make with the basic product to fit my needs. In addition, I’ll also install Textpattern and do the same.

(Previously I had thought that Textpattern was proprietary, only to find out it is open source, and so to make amends, I’ll work with both products. )

Even if you aren’t interested in WordPress or Textpattern, if your site is hosted on Linux, you’ll benefit from the tutorials covering the simple line commands, not to mention SSH access. If your weblog tool uses MySQL, or you’re just interested in it, you’ll also benefit from the essays discussing this popular database. Same with PHP and Apache.

All entries in the Survivor Guide to LAMP are designated with the lava lamp icon (I thought this was apropos), and are featured in a separate category for easier access. If you have anything specific you’d like covered, drop me a note or put in a comment.

Oh, and these tutorials are also open–I’ll be attaching a Creative Commons license to these essays (but only these essays, specific to the posting only, if I can figure out how to do this). Hopefully these tutorials will be incorporated into WordPress’s documentation wiki, and elsewhere, to continue being useful long after I’m gone.

Categories
Political

National day of prayer

Thursday is this country’s National Day of Prayer. This day was set aside back in the 1950’s, the same era when “In God We Trust” was added to the coins, and “Under God” added to the Pledge of Allegience. The purpose of the event is to bring people together from all denominations to pray for the country and to give thanks. Normally I don’t even notice when this day occurs. This year, though, it has several very interesting aspects to it.

First of all, I read that all are welcome to pray on Thursday, but only those members from certain Christian churches can lead prayer sessions. This has peeved the Mormon Church who have been told that they may not lead prayer sessions–in Utah, no less.

Of course if you’re Jewish or Muslim, Hindu, or a member of a Christian sect outside of those classified as a “evangelical Christian Church”, you also can’t lead a prayer session on this day. Well, I suppose you could. I don’t think you’ll get arrested if you do. In fact, if you don’t pray, you probably won’t get arrested.

That’s kind of reassuring.

Now, Oliver North is leading a prayer session. He’s been designated as the Honorary Chair for this year’s events (oh, and by the way, you can order his book here, at the NDP site). Yes, that is the Oliver North of the Iran-Contra illegal gun sales.

(In case you don’t know US history that well, that was when we sold guns to Iran (fighting Iraq–we also supplied arms to Iraq) and then used the money to fund terrorists in Nicaragua.)

Yeah, that Oliver North.

I’m not giving an opinion about this day of prayer led by evangelical Christian churches, to pray for our ‘campaign of freedom’ in Iraq and elsewhere, led by a man who was involved in one of the worst scandals to have ever hit this country.

Nope. No opinion at all.

By the way, what are you doing this Thursday during the Day of Prayer?

Categories
Writing

On Leatherwood updates and walkabouts

Allan Moult has just posted the newest edition of Leatherwood Online. In this edition, there’s a humorous look a the shape of Tasmania (you really must check out the underwear), and photos from a trip to Tasmania from photographer Sheila Smart. (See more of her lovely work here. ) Allan has also started a Leatherwood Online weblog using ExpressionEngine, the new software by pMachine.

In a third story, Allan includes photos from his 22 day walk around the Southwest National Park. Following tradition, I have stolen not just one but two of his photos to grace my page.

I’ve never taken a longer hike like this, over several days and requiring camping. There are overnight hikes here in Missouri, and a glorious one that cuts through the New England area, the Appalachian Trail, which I’ve always wanted to walk. I’m hesitant about hiking by myself, but people do; perhaps this would be a growth experience for me. However, I remember a story about overnight hiking when alone from a friend of mine from years ago. This story was enough to make he hesitate to camp with people, much less by myself.

Steve was the brother of the husband of a close friend of mine and I dated him off and on for a couple of years before I moved to Arizona. He was a very good person, as was his whole family. When my friend and his brother got married, Steve and I and several people spent the night downing tequila shots, until I finally passed out about 5 in the morning. I was working at the photography studio at that time, and I was on duty that Sunday, so I had to crawl out of bed at 9 to get ready to go to work. It was the one and only time that I woke just as drunk as I went to sleep. Luckily, I didn’t drive then, but I must have looked funny wobbling the two miles to work.

Anyway, back to the story. Steve decided to go on a three month hike along the Cascades–all by himself. He was a natural outdoorsman, in excellent physical shape (though shorter than me–he helped me realize that I had no problem dating men shorter than me, height being a matter of mind, and neither of us minded much). He had also been on long hikes before and he worked out a schedule of meet ups with his family, to check in and re-supply.

Well, about a month after he started the trip, he cut it short, walking over 20 hours down from the trail until he found a phone to call his brother to come get him. We were, frankly, surprised. When I saw him next, we sat long into the night over beers talking about it.

The trip was great, he said. He’d meet up with interesting people along the way, and sometimes would hike with them for a time. Mostly though he stayed by himself because he preferred to be alone on these trips. The weather was good, the hiking was good, everything was good.

Then one night, while he was in his tent, he heard a sound that woke him with a start, and set his heart to hammering. He said it was an unearthly scream–a howl that was neither human nor any beast he’d heard before. He shot up in his sleeping bag, and strained his ears to hear the sound again. Nothing. He started to lay back down, thinking it must have been some kind of owl, when at that moment, the sound happened again.

He said it sounded like a human crossed with some form of animal. He couldn’t tell if the sound was of pain, or of rage. Frankly, he didn’t want to know.

He crept out of his little pup tent–the kind of tent barely bigger than the sleeping bag–to the fire and grabbed a brand from it, holding it aloft. He hadn’t brought anything but a knife, but even then, he didn’t think to grab it. All he wanted was the light. To light the shadows in the forest around him.

The sound continued for another 15 minutes or so–close enough to terrify him, but not so close as to frighten him into fainting so that he could escape from the thrall of it. Once it stopped, he built the fire up and sat there, all night, with his back to it, just looking into the forest in the direction of the sound. At first light, he put the fire out, packed up, and headed down the mountain as fast as he could.

As he told me the story, his normally robust and jovial face became drawn and the hand holding the beer shook. Steve was not a man to lie, and neither was he a man to exaggerate. He loved the outdoors and it would take much to get him to come down from the mountain.

I lost track of all of them, Steve, his brother, my friend over time with my gypsy ways. I regret this now, but at the time I just couldn’t stay in one place long enough to send out phone numbers and address. This was pre-Net days, at least for me, so keeping in touch required a great deal of resolution–resolution I lacked in my restlessness.

But before I lost touch, I know for a fact that Steve never went into the mountains again.

I was reminded of this story when I saw Allan’s photos. Funny how a wilderness half a planet away can remind me of a friend, a quarter of a century away.

Categories
Connecting

Drowning in a sea of surety

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I think that we should designate one day per week to be Humility Day. Or perhaps Day of Doubt or Insecurity Day.

Each weblog we visit, the owner–myself included–pontificates on all the wrongs and evils of the day. Expressing opinions is a good thing, but lately it seems that even the most thoughtful weblog writers are screaming their words out, pages covered with the spit of their emotional outbursts, saturated with surety.

Not just in politics: I’m finding the same level of surety in technology and tool usage, even which operating system we use. It’s as if none of us can tolerate even the slightest possibility of doubt in our choices. We can’t just talk about how nice our TiBooks are–we have to extol their virtues, defend passionately the interface, angrily denounce the competition.

And don’t even get me started on syndication formats or weblogging tools.

More than the absolutes, I find myself getting burned out by all the good people who are writing for change, as if they’re desperate for change now. Now! Now now now now now! People I admire and agree with, or not, but after a while it’s exhausting reading about one evil after another–bang bang bang–like a machine gun of outrage and despair. And anger.

It sells, too. We once talked about what would it take to get more women in the top of the buzz sheets, and now we know: sex and anger. Technorati 100 is dominated by the Suicide Girls, and many of the top women, such as Michele at A Small Victory, well, they’re angry all the time. Once upon a time Michele didn’t seem so angry but I’ve been reading her these last few weeks and she’s gone after one person or another–and her rank rises with each volley of words.

Anger and sex. Anger, sex, and absolutes. Just listen to the opinions, right and left. If we lined up all the online pundits, end to end, their perceived influence would stand ten times as tall as the actuality. Not only that, but their crap would provide enough ethanol to light the planet.

It’s not that people have opinions about the US President or the election or the war in Iraq–it’s just that they’re so damn sure they’re right. We’ve been talking about how polarized the upcoming election in the States is but on a good day nowadays, I’ll take polarized over what we’ve got. Everyone is so damn angry.

Look. It made me angry.

If we could have just one day per week when we all talked softly and quietly; when we listened to others views, and actually listened, not filtered; where we didn’t shoot from the hip, bringing out the verbal axes at first word; maybe where we even acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers–I can’t help thinking that we’d all be richer for the experience.

I’m not talking about expressions of brotherly love and joy-joy talk from feel good brothers and sisters; I’m also not saying we need to agree– that’s not the point. Trying to pretend we’re all one big loving family would be just as hollow, and fake, as implying that those who disagree with us are evil.

What I’m saying is: no bad guys; no heros; no absolutes. Can’t we set aside one day per week when we’re not a hundred percent right?

Categories
Books Writing

Group editing

J.D. Lasica is doing a brave thing: he’s put his new book, Darknet: Remixing the Future of Movies, Music, and Television online at both a wiki and a weblog, and then has invited all of us to join him in editing it.

He writes:

Goal: In the spirit of open media and participatory journalism, I’d like to use this wiki to publish drafts of each chapter in the book. I hope you’ll participate in this effort by contributing feedback, edits, criticism, corrections, and additional anecdotes, either through the comments field below or by sending me email. Feel free to be as detailed as you like or to insert comments or questions. After all, you’re the editor. (And remember, this is for a book manuscript, not a finished online document.) If you make a couple of helpful edits, I’ll mention your name in the book’s Acknowledgments (and buy you a drink next time we meet up).

Request: This is an experiment in trust. Feel free to dive in and make all the changes you think are warranted. I’ve opened this up as a public wiki, rather than a private space. Feel free to link to this main page from your blog, though I’ll also ask at this early stage that people not excerpt material or dissect any of the material in detail because we’re not at the public discussion point yet.

If you’re going to allow group editing, a wiki is the way to do it–have the people merge their own efforts, rather than having to do it yourself. However, I would hesitate before I approached any form of group edit, and it was my experiences with Practical RDF that led to this.

During the review of the book, I posted my chapters online and asked for edits and suggestions from the RDF community. I did receive a great number of suggestions and corrections, for which I was and still am grateful. However, a few weeks into the effort and I began to regret taking this approach, and I won’t do this again. Why? Because people bring with them different expectations about what they want to see in a book on specific topics, and trying to merge these expectations is virtually impossible.

For instance, the semantic web folks wanted the Practical RDF book to focus more on the esoteric aspects of RDF: less on RDF/XML, more on OWL, and more on the underlying theory, and the glorious new future of semantic web goodness. In fact, some of the RDF community was distinctly unhappy at my attempts at opening the technology up for everyday use.The applied folks, though, felt that I spent too much time on the specifications, and not enough on the practical applications. Even within the sections on practical application functionality, some felt I spent too much time on language coverage of RDF and not enough on actual applications based on RDF. Or, conversely, too much on applications, and not enough on language implementations.

All of these people had good suggestions, and I appreciated the time they invested in helping me. However, there was no way to converge these different outlooks into something feasible, workable, and especially readable. All that happened is that I became overwhelmed, and quickly burned out.

There’s also the challenge of receiving critical feedback from dozens of people, all at once. Most book companies only provide feedback from a few people, and this usually gets filtered through the editor. They know that authors can become either discouraged or defensive about writing if they’re hit with too many criticisms of their work in a short period of time. Remember that most people when they review something from an editorial perspective–be it book, music, or food–tend to focus on what’s wrong in the work, rather than what’s right. It’s the nature of what we are.

Now, in some ways, J.D.’s approach works through these difficulties because rather than provide feedback, you provide direct annotation or edits on the work. In other words, you walk the talk. This has the advantage of forcing the person to come up with a solution to go with their criticism. You don’t like the way a paragraph is worded? Then re-word it.

Still, I know for myself that I have a real ownership of my writing, and it’s difficult enough for me to go through the editing process with a trusted editor, much less an unknown, but experienced, reviewer. To do so with just anyone who wants to participate, regardless of ability, judgement, experience, or level of humility–especially level of humility–strikes me as a rather scary proposition.

Regardless of my own personal foibles, I am going to be extremely curious how this works out for J.D.